Handicap question?

I have no idea what the best way to calculate handicap is so I was hoping someone could help me out as I am curious to get a rough idea of what my handicap is. I just entered all of my scores for the last couple years into an excel spreadsheet. I have 61 rounds where I only played 9 holes. My average for those rounds was a 56.6. I have 20 rounds where I played the full 18 holes. My average for those rounds is a 106. All of these rounds are on the same course.

The scorecard has 67.2/115 listed on it. I am assuming this is the slope rating? Can the 9 hole rounds count towards handicap or just the 18 hole rounds? Is there anymore information needed to find my handicap or is this all I need?

i use oobgolf for statistics and handicap (though it's not an official handicap). you can enter scores for 9 holes on there, but i'm not sure how it works in terms of your handicap (i've never entered a score for 9 holes before).

There are a lot of websites out there that let you calculate your handicap for free.  You just have to put in your score, the course rating and slope and it will calculate your handicap for you.  If you are a member at a course they will have a computer there that you can put your scores in (usually included in membership price, at least where I play they do).  Some courses will let non-members use their handicap system for a fee (around $30-$35 at my course).  But the websites where you can do it for free, is not your official handicap, even though they use the same formula.  They are not recognized by the USGA as official, meaning you cannot use the handicap for tournaments.

I would say it depends on the use of the handicap score you are gathering.. If you are only using it for personal reasons, then what you are doing is just fine.. I would do the same..  A lot of casual leagues and fun events use more unofficial means, such as what you're doing while tossing in the 80% ruling..  Then you get more detail with that by limiting you holes to nothing more then a double bogey (USGA system), then toss in your index and slope stuff to get a more accurate number..

Good luck

In order to use the 9 hole scores for handicap purposes you have to group them into 18 hole scores.  If you are grouping a front nine and a back nine then you can go ahead and use the

course's rating and slope.  If you are grouping 2 front nines then you need to know the rating and slope for each 9.  You will double the 9-hole course rating for the front and use the slope for the front.  Similarly if you are grouping 2 back nines.  You should be able to get this information from the course.  Or you can get it from the USGA Course Rating and Slope Database.

http://ncrdb.usga.org/NCRDB/

Once you have your 18 hole scores, ratings and slopes you proceed as follows:

1)  Only use your most recent 20 (18-hole) scores

2) For each score compute the differential as (score-rating)*(113/slope) rounded to the nearest tenth.

3) Now pick out the 10 lowest differentials.  Add them, divide by 10 and multiply the result by .96.  Truncate the result to one decimal place.  This is your handicap index.

There is a lot of information about computing handicaps and dealing with 9 hole scores in the USGA Handicap Manual.

http://www.usga.org/Rule-Books/Handicap-System-Manual/Handicap-Manual/

can you do this? i didn't think you could group two rounds that were played at different times under different conditions.

Ok, so I did all this and came up with 32.2 for my handicap index. Is there a maximum handicap or does it just keep going up indefinitely? Thanks everyone for all the help so far.

max is 36.4